I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.